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CHAPTER VII
It is somewhere about three weeks since the party invited
by Sir Peter and Lady Chillingly assembled at Exmundham,
and they are still there, though people invited to a country
house have seldom compassion enough for the dulness of its
owner to stay more than three days. Mr. Chillingly Mivers, indeed, had not exceeded that orthodox limit. Quietly observant,
during his stay, of young Gordon’s manner towards Cecilia,
and hers towards him, he had satisfied himself that there was
no cause to alarm Sir Peter, or induce the worthy baronet to
regret the invitation he had given to that clever kinsman. For
all the visitors remaining Exmundham had a charm.
To Lady Glenalvon, because in the hostess she met her
most familiar friend when both were young girls, and because
it pleased her to note the interest which Cecilia Travers took in
the place so associated with memories of the man to whom
it was Lady Glenalvon’s hope to see her united. To Chillingly
Gordon, because no opportunity could be so favourable for his
own well-concealed designs on the hand and heart of the heiress. To the heiress herself the charm needs no explanation.
To Leopold Travers the attractions of Exmundham
were unquestionably less fascinating. Still even he was well
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EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
pleased to prolong his stay. His active mind found amusement in wandering over an estate the acreage of which would
have warranted a much larger rental, and lecturing Sir Peter on the old-fashioned system of husbandry which that
good-natured easy proprietor permitted his tenants to adopt,
as well as on the number of superfluous hands that were employed on the pleasure-grounds and in the general management of the estate, such as carpenters, sawyers, woodmen,
bricklayers, and smiths.
When the Squire said, “You could do just as well with
a third of those costly dependants,” Sir Peter, unconsciously
plagiarizing the answer of the old French grand seigneur, replied, “Very likely. But the question is, could the rest do just as
well without me?”
Exmundham, indeed, was a very expensive place to keep
up. The house, built by some ambitious Chillingly three centuries ago, would have been large for an owner of thrice the revenues; and though the flower-garden was smaller than that at
Braefieldville, there were paths and drives through miles of
young plantations and old woodlands that furnished lazy
occupation to an army of labourers. No wonder that, despite
his nominal ten thousand a year, Sir Peter was far from being a rich man. Exmundham devoured at least half the rental.
The active mind of Leopold Travers also found ample occupation in the stores of his host’s extensive library.
Travers, never much of a reader, was by no means a despiser of learning, and he soon took to historical and archaeological
researches with the ardour of a man who must always throw energy into any pursuit that occasion presents as an escape from
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KENELM CHILLINGLY
indolence. Indolent Leopold Travers never could be. But, more
than either of these resources of occupation, the companionship of Chillingly Gordon excited his interest and quickened
the current of his thoughts. Always fond of renewing his own
youth in the society of the young, and of the sympathizing
temperament which belongs to cordial natures, he had, as we
have seen, entered very heartily into the ambition of George
Belvoir, and reconciled himself very pliably to the humours of
Kenelm Chillingly. But the first of these two was a little too
commonplace, the second a little too eccentric, to enlist
the complete good-fellowship which, being alike very clever
and very practical, Leopold Travers established with that very
clever and very practical representative of the rising generation, Chillingly Gordon. Between them there was this meeting-ground, political and worldly, a great contempt for innocuous old-fashioned notions; added to which, in the mind of
Leopold Travers, was a contempt — which would have been
complete, but that the contempt admitted dread — of harmful new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts,
threatened ruin to his country and downfall to the follies of
existent society, and which, interpreted by his language, tamed
itself into the man of the world’s phrase, “Going too far for
me.” Notions which, by the much more cultivated intellect
and the immeasurably more soaring ambition of Chillingly
Gordon, might be viewed and criticised thus: “Could I accept
these doctrines? I don’t see my way to being Prime Minister of
a country in which religion and capital are still powers to be
consulted. And, putting aside religion and capital, I don’t see
how, if these doctrines passed into law, with a good coat on
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EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
my back I should not be a sufferer. Either I, as having a good
coat, should have it torn off my back as a capitalist, or, if I remonstrated in the name of moral honesty, be put to death as
a religionist.”
Therefore when Leopold Travers said, “Of course we must
go on,” Chillingly Gordon smiled and answered, “Certainly,
go on.” And when Leopold Travers added, “But we may go too
far,” Chillingly Gordon shook his dead, and replied, “How
true that is! Certainly too far.”
Apart from the congeniality of political sentiment, there
were other points of friendly contact between the older
and younger man. Each was an exceedingly pleasant man of
the world; and, though Leopold Travers could not have plumbed
certain deeps in Chillingly Gordon’s nature, — and in every
man’s nature there are deeps which his ablest observer cannot fathom, — yet he was not wrong when he said to himself,
“Gordon is a gentleman.”
Utterly would my readers misconceive that very clever
young man, if they held him to be a hypocrite like Blifil or
Joseph Surface. Chillingly Gordon, in every private sense of
the word, was a gentleman. If he had staked his whole fortune on a rubber at whist, and an undetected glance at his
adversary’s hand would have made the difference between
loss and gain, he would have turned away his head and said,
“Hold up your cards.” Neither, as I have had occasion to explain before, was he actuated by any motive in common
with the vulgar fortune-hunter in his secret resolve to win
the hand of the heiress. He recognized no inequality of worldly gifts between them. He said to himself, “Whatever she may
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give me in money, I shall amply repay in worldly position if
I succeed, and succeed I certainly shall. If I were as rich as
Lord Westminster, and still cared about being Prime Minister,
I should select her as the most fitting woman I have seen for
a Prime Minister’s wife.”
It must be acknowledged that this sort of self-commune,
if not that of a very ardent lover, is very much that of a sensible man setting high value on himself, bent on achieving
the prizes of a public career, and desirous of securing in his
wife a woman who would adorn the station to which he confidently aspired. In fact, no one so able as Chillingly Gordon
would ever have conceived the ambition of being Minister of
England if in all that in private life constitutes the English
gentleman he could be fairly subject to reproach.
He was but in public life what many a gentleman honest in
private life has been before him, an ambitious, resolute egotist,
by no means without personal affections, but holding them
all subordinate to the objects of personal ambition, and with
no more of other principle than that of expediency in reference to his own career than would cover a silver penny. But
expediency in itself he deemed the statesman’s only rational
principle. And to the consideration of expediency he brought
a very unprejudiced intellect, quite fitted to decide whether
the public opinion of a free and enlightened people was for
turning St. Paul’s Cathedral into an Agapemone or not.
During the summer weeks he had thus vouchsafed to
the turfs and groves of Exmundham, Leopold Travers was not
the only person whose good opinion Chillingly Gordon had
ingratiated. He had won the warmest approbation from Mrs.
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EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
Campion. His conversation reminded her of that which she
had enjoyed in the house of her departed spouse. In talking
with Cecilia she was fond of contrasting him to Kenelm, not to
the favour of the latter, whose humours she utterly failed to
understand, and whom she pertinaciously described as “so
affected.” “A most superior young man Mr. Gordon, so well
informed, so sensible, — above all, so natural.” Such was her
judgment upon the unavowed candidate to Cecilia’s hand; and
Mrs. Campion required no avowal to divine the candidature.
Even Lady Glenalvon had begun to take friendly interest in
the fortunes of this promising young man. Most women can
sympathize with youthful ambition. He impressed her with
a deep conviction of his abilities, and still more with respect
for their concentration upon practical objects of power and renown. She too, like Mrs. Campion, began to draw comparisons
unfavourable to Kenelm between the two cousins: the one
seemed so slothfully determined to hide his candle under
a bushel, the other so honestly disposed to set his light before
men. She felt also annoyed and angry that Kenelm was thus
absenting himself from the paternal home at the very time of
her first visit to it, and when he had so felicitous an opportunity of seeing more of the girl in whom he knew that Lady
Glenalvon deemed he might win, if he would properly woo,
the wife that would best suit him. So that when one day Mrs.
Campion, walking through the gardens alone with Lady Glenalvon while from the gardens into the park went Chillingly
Gordon, arm-in-arm with Leopold Travers, abruptly asked,
“Don’t you think that Mr. Gordon is smitten with Cecilia,
though he, with his moderate fortune, does not dare to say so?
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KENELM CHILLINGLY
And don’t you think that any girl, if she were as rich as Cecilia
will be, would be more proud of such a husband as Chillingly
Gordon than of some silly earl?”
Lady Glenalvon answered curtly, but somewhat sorrowfully, “Yes.”
After a pause she added, “There is a man with whom I did
once think she would have been happier than with any other. One man who ought to be dearer to me than Mr. Gordon,
for he saved the life of my son, and who, though perhaps less
clever than Mr. Gordon, still has a great deal of talent within
him, which might come forth and make him — what shall
I say? — a useful and distinguished member of society, if married to a girl so sure of raising any man she marries as Cecilia
Travers. But if I am to renounce that hope, and look through
the range of young men brought under my notice, I don’t
know one, putting aside consideration of rank and fortune,
I should prefer for a clever daughter who went heart and soul
with the ambition of a clever man. But, Mrs. Campion, I have
not yet quite renounced my hope; and, unless I do, I yet think
there is one man to whom I would rather give Cecilia, if she
were my daughter.”
Therewith Lady Glenalvon so decidedly broke off the subject of conversation that Mrs. Campion could not have renewed it without such a breach of the female etiquette of good
breeding as Mrs. Campion was the last person to adventure.
Lady Chillingly could not help being pleased with Gordon.
He was light in hand, served to amuse her guests, and made up
a rubber of whist in case of need.
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EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
There were two persons, however, with whom Gordon
made no ground; namely, Parson John and Sir Peter. When
Travers praised him one day for the solidity of his parts and
the soundness of his judgment, the Parson replied snappishly, “Yes, solid and sound as one of those tables you buy at
a broker’s; the thickness of the varnish hides the defects in
the joints: the whole framework is rickety.” But when the Parson was indignantly urged to state the reason by which he
arrived at so harsh a conclusion, he could only reply by an assertion which seemed to his questioner a declamatory burst of
parsonic intolerance.
“Because,” said Parson John, “he has no love for man, and
no reverence for God. And no character is sound and solid
which enlarges its surface at the expense of its supports.”
On the other hand, the favour with which Sir Peter had at
first regarded Gordon gradually vanished, in proportion as,
acting on the hint Mivers had originally thrown out but did
not deem it necessary to repeat, he watched the pains which
the young man took to insinuate himself into the good graces of Mr. Travers and Mrs. Campion, and the artful and halfsuppressed gallantry of his manner to the heiress.
Perhaps Gordon had not ventured thus “to feel his way” till
after Mivers had departed; or perhaps Sir Peter’s parental anxiety rendered him, in this instance, a shrewder observer than
was the man of the world, whose natural acuteness was, in
matters of affection, not unfrequently rendered languid by his
acquired philosophy of indifferentism.
More and more every day, every hour, of her sojourn beneath his roof, did Cecilia become dearer to Sir Peter, and
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KENELM CHILLINGLY
stronger and stronger became his wish to secure her for
his daughter-in-law. He was inexpressibly flattered by her
preference for his company: ever at hand to share his customary walks, his kindly visits to the cottages of peasants or
the homesteads of petty tenants; wherein both were sure to
hear many a simple anecdote of Master Kenelm in his childhood, anecdotes of whim or good-nature, of considerate pity
or reckless courage.
Throughout all these varieties of thought or feeling in
the social circle around her, Lady Chillingly preserved the unmoved calm of her dignified position. A very good woman certainly, and very ladylike. No one could detect a flaw in her
character, or a fold awry in her flounce. She was only, like
the gods of Epicurus, too good to trouble her serene existence
with the cares of us simple mortals. Not that she was without
a placid satisfaction in the tribute which the world laid upon
her altars; nor was she so supremely goddess-like as to soar
above the household affections which humanity entails on
the dwellers and denizens of earth. She liked her husband
as much as most elderly wives like their elderly husbands.
She bestowed upon Kenelm a liking somewhat more warm,
and mingled with compassion. His eccentricities would have
puzzled her, if she had allowed herself to be puzzled: it troubled her less to pity them. She did not share her husband’s
desire for his union with Cecilia. She thought that her son
would have a higher place in the county if he married Lady
Jane, the Duke of Clanville’s daughter; and “that is what he
ought to do,” said Lady Chillingly to herself. She entertained
none of the fear that had induced Sir Peter to extract from
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EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
Kenelm the promise not to pledge his hand before he had
received his father’s consent. That the son of Lady Chillingly
should make a mesalliance, however crotchety he might be in
other respects, was a thought that it would have so disturbed
her to admit that she did not admit it.
Such was the condition of things at Exmundham when
the lengthy communication of Kenelm reached Sir Peter’s
hands.
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